He hummed it every night for thirty-seven years, the same soft tune, over our babies and later just to me.
When he died, I couldn't remember the whole thing. Just three notes, like a half-open door.
Last week I found a swim cap in the junk drawer. That cap was on his head the day we met at the town pool.
The midwife who delivered our daughter said he hummed that lullaby the whole time I pushed.
I still catch myself humming those three notes when I'm feeding my mother her dinner or cleaning a cage at the clinic.
Not the whole song. But those three notes are enough to bring him back, just for a second.